Catering for staff and customers brings rewards for hotel industry

Eamonn McKeon believes a few "cowboys" are responsible for the poor image of the hotel industry in some quarters.

Having spent much of his working life in the sector he is disappointed so many young people and often their parents see a career in the industry as offering nothing but low pay and long hours.

As chairman of CERT, the State tourism training agency, his mission is to bring about a fundamental change in public perception.

He adamantly rejects the view that pay is the sole reason for problems in recruiting people into the sector. "There are so many other issues, like unsociable hours, seasonability and being prepared to be mobile, that to only focus on pay gives a distorted picture," he says.

Like a supremely polished hotel manager, he projects a reassuring and organised air and having spent the first years of his career handling complaints at Bord Failte, deals with issues cautiously.

Wearing his CERT hat, his biggest challenge is finding sufficient numbers of young people willing to go into the hotel, restaurant and tourism sector. Every year the numbers required by individual establishments rises and the pressure comes on CERT, more than any other organisation, to provide them with new recruits.

He says when secondary school pupils compare the salaries they can expect to earn in the IT industry with those available in hotels and restaurants, the scale of the problem is given direct meaning.

In his capacity as Great Southern Hotels chief executive, the challenge is to create a nationwide hotel group by fending off competition from overseas challengers.

The future of Great Southern group, which is a subsidiary of Aer Rianta, is also uncertain, with the Government committed to a programme of gradual State sell-offs.

Mr McKeon has seen the highs and lows of the hotel industry and is confident about the future.

"I believe we can sustain and grow the tourist figures because we now have the facilities and are beginning to get the marketing right," he says.

Getting the staffing right may be more difficult. "I think hotels as employers have an image problem and it extends to parents talking their children out of taking a job in the sector," he says.

However, he argues that the biggest advantage of taking up employment with a job in a hotel either as a chef, waiter, manager is that it can be a platform for starting your own business later. "As everyone knows the best chefs in the world start in the hotel sector and many bar staff end up owning their own business," he says.

The fact that CERT trained 11,000 people last year and successfully placed them all, shows that some are listening to the message.

He says his approach is to appeal directly to people and a new campaign, in conjunction with the Irish Hotels Federation and the Restaurants Association, in the autumn will target both schoolchildren and parents by entering the classroom.

"I am the kind of person who would like to go around and talk to every person individually, but that is not possible," he says. Instead CERT will be bringing into classrooms those who are currently carving out a career in the sector.

"The idea is that when pupils see and talk to people who have made a career in hotels work for them, it will leave an impression," he says. He hopes this will change the views of parents, who will also be targeted in a separate campaign.

He has come to understand the reservations some people have about a career in the area, despite his own enthusiasm for the life as a hotelier. "I love the pace of hotels and the variety of guests that come in the door," he says.

He says the variety of staff is something he enjoys too. He estimates that in some parts of Dublin overseas employees make up as much as 10 per cent of hotel staff. However, on a national basis, this figure falls to about 2 per cent. He admires the multi-lingual ability of these workers and says they bring a continental "service ethos" that ultimately benefits customers.

He firmly rejects the notion that overseas workers are doing the jobs that Irish people are not prepared to do. "Many of them are students looking to earn some money over the summer, they are co-citizens of ours in Europe and have a right not to be exploited," he says.

The long-term unemployed represent another source of labour that is not being tapped adequately, he adds. "We have been able to get some of them into the system, but there is still a lot more to be done." Women returning to the workplace are another group the sector is hoping to attract, he says.

The explosive growth of the hotel business means that many managers simply cannot afford to have their employees taking breaks for training purposes. "CERT has become involved in training programmes which happen in the workplace rather than in a seminar room," he says.

Mr McKeon says that tourist numbers this year look like being impressive and he has little time for those who say the State-agencies should be doing more for particular regions.

"People who say they are not getting a fair crack of the whip have to remember that you cannot make people go to places they do not want to." He says the only discouraging part of this year's season is that French and Germans numbers look like being down.

The beauty of tourism, he adds, is that it always changes and the unexpected is never far away. But this surprise element brings dangers too. In 1991 a buoyant Irish tourist industry fell asunder as a result of the Gulf War and American tourists decided most European destinations were off-limits.

"There is no amount of planning which can prevent that kind of thing, so even when you are doing well, you can still be only one step away from heartbreak," he says.

One of his current worries is the way Bord Failte is losing many of its senior personnel. "It seems to be in some disarray at the moment and at a time when EU funds are about to come to an end, it is a worrying situation," he says.

He firmly rules himself out for the chief executive's job at Bord Failte, which is currently in the process of being filled.

Being involved in two State bodies does not mean he cannot envisage an alternative life. For example, he has no problem with the idea of the Great Southern Group leaving the shelter of the State-sector. "I remember there was consideration of the group floating on the stock exchange back in 1988 and you never know something like that might happen some day," he says.

Turnover of £22 million and net profits of £2.9 million make the group one of the big four of the Irish hotels sector

along with Jurys, Doyles and Ryans. "The group has been almost insolvent, has had owners as diverse as CIE and Aer Rianta, but despite all this it has grown profitably," he says.

It has done so by offering a broadly similar package in all its eight hotels. "That is the trend in all major hotel groups, people want to know that wherever they stay the package is consistent right down to the towels," he says.